Stupid Wedding Shower Games

I just remembered this! It's about wedding showers and a stupid game, or superstition, that the women play during them.

DW had three wedding showers. She didn't throw them herself. Our mothers threw one, her roommate threw the second, and I forgot who threw the third. Since DW already lived on her own, she didn't need the usual stuff to set up a house, so these were fun type showers. One was a lingerie shower where they gave her stuff to get me interested on our honeymoon (oh, they did!). Anyway ...

At all three, DW told me the women said "The number of ribbons you break is the number of children you will have."

DW very carefully untied each and every ribbon! She didn't break a single one. I just remembered that. She was a determined CFer back then, even though we never talked about it. From what she told me, that little statement pissed her off to no end and almost ruined the fun of partying with her friends.

Yep. 26 years later, the number of ribbons she broke is the number of children we have -- NONE!

How many of you heard that stupid superstition? Did you untie them, or get the scissors and cut them like so many Gordian Knots? Did you cringe when you heard that at someone else's wedding shower?

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Good lawd they did that to me too. I was just like your wife and made sure to not break a damn one and pointed it out repeatedly. I was also asked if I wanted to save the wrapping paper so I could line the dresser drawers of future babies with it. I said nope and made sure to crumple the shit out of everything as I shoved it in garbage bags.

Save the wrapping paper to line ... okay, that's a new one, and even more stupid than the ribbon saying! What is a child going to think when he or she opens a drawer and sees "HAPPY WEDDING" underneath the socks!

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I never had any wedding showers, or even wedding ceremonies. I suppose it's important to some people, but I could never see the sense in all the planning, agonizing, and expense. Both of my "weddings" were courthouse elopments, which I was happy with. Both were also spur-of-the-moment things. (Must reconsider this policy.) Suppose this is one way to avoid those cutesy games. Relatives gave us money for starting up house-keeping.

First wedding, went to the courthouse with a friend of the groom's, had Chinese for a late lunch, got sicky drunk, and skipped sex altogether. Aside from new husband trying to get me to eat a piece of bread around 2am to keep me from getting sick, it was nice.

Second wedding, paid about $25 for the license, $50 for a night in a cheap motel in a neighboring town, $10 for two bottles of cheap Andre champagne, and $20 for a simple dinner out. Went back home the next morning. Whole she-bang came in around $100, and we had a great time.

Maybe this is a good way to escape the insanity...elope!

Redheadedharlot: I hear you! DW and I have said repeatedly that if we had it all to do over again, we'd elope. We didn't need the engagement. We were already best friends and knew each other well enough. It was a blooming pain! Our mothers engaged in more drama than I knew they could. Mom wanted to invite all her cousins, right down to third cousins (and I couldn't stand those people), while DW's mother wanted to invite all her old friends, even ones that DW didn't know. We wanted a small wedding, so our mothers kept bumping our friends from the list. We finally put our feet down and told them we were inviting our friends and if there was any room left over, they could invite their people. That did't fly well with them! But it was our wedding. Oh, the drama! Oh, the butthurt! Mom told me that she just wanted to extort wedding gifts for us from all the cousins she sent gifts to in the past. Like we needed china? GAH! We never used it, and sold it five years ago to get it out of the way. The best wedding gifts we received were towels -- nice, soft, absorbent bath sheets. Seriously, someone gave us a wooden duck. The wedding was a lot more fun than I'm implying, but the engagement was a pain in the ass that still causes us to grumble about our relatives.

Dad said he'd pay for the honeymoon if we eloped. We should have taken the old man up on his offer!

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I am so with you nathanomir. I loved the wedding. I did not love the pre wedding drama. I was pretty good at standing my ground when anyone else tried to take over, but the stress of everything the last fer weeks before the actual wedding and the strain it put on the two of us was not always worth it.

Oh well. It's over and done with and never happening again. Got very lucky and picked the right guy the first time around. Sounds like you did pretty well yourself.

I've never heard of either the ribbon breaking or drawer lining "games." Then again, I've only been to a few bridal showers, and none of the involved brides were interested in playing stupid games.

Me and DH didn't have a "proper" wedding" (church, ceremony, party etc.) mostly due to financial reasons but i don't think i could have taken the stress and especially the bingos. Even after that i received messages of the kind "and may you be blessed with plenty and healthy children" from my side of the family. We've also got enough of the when are the loaves coming questions and the butthurt attitudes of people who don't accept our choice.

One of my friends who says she's CF had a small wedding and here there's a tradition of throwing your flower bouquet over sauna. If it you throw it over the sauna you'll have a boy, if not - a girl. My friend threw it and it didn't go over. Her MIL started yelling "a baby girl is coming, a baby girl is coming!" I don't get it why my friends agreed to do that if she's CF. I would have refused it...because nothing is coming!eyes2

THE WORST, by far, shower game I was a captive participant in was at a baby shower. Among the foolish parlor games was at the end of the shower each guest was asked to look under her chair and remove a diaper that had been taped up under it. Then, they asked us to open the diapers and the "winner" had fucking chocolate pudding smashed inside it.

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If YOU are the "exception" to what I am saying, then why does my commentary bother you so much?
I don't hate your kids, I HATE YOU!

I remember the one where the number of small lines on part of your palm was indicative of future children. I told them it meant I needed a better moisturiser.

This horseshit is why BF and I are eloping - sort of. We are going to do a fancy-pants destination wedding in the Caribbean with a guest list of around 20: no showers, no invitations, no crap-ass. We're simple people and we like to keep it simple, but both of us wanted to get married on the beach instead of in a courthouse, so...why not? A big bill, for sure, but also the perfect excuse to keep pesky relatives and coworkers from being butthurt over not getting an invitation.

I broke TONS of ribbons at my showers. (ribbon was not as strong back then.,.. cheep papery stuff) I never shat one kid. So there you supersticious cows.
The game they played at one of my showers was what the bride said first when she opened each gift was what she'd say on her wedding night. (someone wrote it down as it was being said under the guise of writing down each gift and who gave it) Came out kind of funny. I still have the list. Some of mine were. "I've never seen one of these before" and "Where do I put this?' and "My cousin had one of these and she had 4 kids" (I think it was a space save thing) It was stupid, but got some laughs.

This happened to me at my bridal shower last month. Someone mentioned as I was opening the first package that the number of ribbons I broke would be the number of kids I would have. I had never heard this before but seemed to be the only one. It was all in good fun as I'm almost 35 and have been clear about my position for more than a decade. I made a point of saying a few times that I didn't intend to break any. One of my friends who is awesome changed the subjext and asked me if I knew that all the ribbons and bows were supposed to be saved for the bouquet for the rehearsal. I also hadn't heard this and for some reason I really liked the idea and the cheesiness of it, so she got a paper plate and pulled the ribbons through in the front and decorated it with bows. It looks GREAT and I will make sure I have that thing (with all its unbroken ribbons) in my hands when I walk down the aisle at my rehearsal the night before the wedding. But this whole thread just goes to show that most people (a) assume kids are a given and (b) don't differentiate between marriage and kids, they're just lumped together in one big lifescripty blob.

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Snark Shark
"Seriously, someone gave us a wooden duck"

larious

WTF???



does it quack at wooden people???

No, but Dad's Siamese cat used to quack at it. I swear that cat's meow sounded like a duck quacking.

It looked like an old fashioned duck hunting decoy, but it was made out of pine stained brown. As if that would fool any muscovies out there. I liked it because it was a totally useless wedding gift, but it went in the first round when we started jettisoning dust magnets.

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tausa
I remember the one where the number of small lines on part of your palm was indicative of future children. I told them it meant I needed a better moisturiser.

That is based on actual traditional palm reading but they probably do it wrong. I once did a full scale analysis of both palms and I will never get married or have children according to my research.

OMG I have all kinds of small lines between the bigger ones on my palms. Maybe mine are indictitive of the number of poodles I'll have (or had) LOL

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Snark Shark
"Seriously, someone gave us a wooden duck"

larious

WTF???



does it quack at wooden people???

"Who gives a ... duck ?"

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nathanomir
Seriously, someone gave us a wooden duck.

I've seen those things in people's houses before! What on earth is the point of them? Surely a thing so unsightly can't be decorative.

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strange aeons

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nathanomir
Seriously, someone gave us a wooden duck.

I've seen those things in people's houses before! What on earth is the point of them? Surely a thing so unsightly can't be decorative.

Beats me. I can understand someone collecting genuine antique decoys. That isn't too strange. But a replica, that isn't even painted? It usually sat in a dark corner out of the way. I don't remember who gave this to us, but he or she obviously didn't know us very well. We're Medievalists, so a Viking helmet would have been more appropriate.

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norcalgirl
One of my friends who is awesome changed the subjext and asked me if I knew that all the ribbons and bows were supposed to be saved for the bouquet for the rehearsal. I also hadn't heard this and for some reason I really liked the idea and the cheesiness of it, so she got a paper plate and pulled the ribbons through in the front and decorated it with bows. It looks GREAT and I will make sure I have that thing (with all its unbroken ribbons) in my hands when I walk down the aisle at my rehearsal the night before the wedding.

In the back of my mind, I thought I remembered this happening to DW, too. I asked her, and she said, yes it did. Her matron of honor saved the ribbons and bows from all three showers and ran them through a hole in one of the cake plates. That's a pretty cool little ritual.

When I told DW I had posted this, she said the main reason she didn't break the ribbons was not that she didn't want children (she didn't) but that she refused to let anyone tell her how to run her life, especially the old biddies who were waiting to count the number of ribbons she broke.

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nathanomir

When I told DW I had posted this, she said the main reason she didn't break the ribbons was not that she didn't want children (she didn't) but that she refused to let anyone tell her how to run her life, especially the old biddies who were waiting to count the number of ribbons she broke.

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Same for me. I don't believe in those dumb superstitions but I wanted to make a point of telling those ladies there will be no gossiping about my uterus. I was still calling myself on the fence about kids then. Guess we all know how that turned out.